Directed by Hirokazu Koreeda • Drama • With Makiko Esumi, Tadanobu Asano • 1995 • 110 minutes
One of the finest films of Japanese cinema, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s first feature film Maborosi is a story of love, loss, and ultimately, regeneration.
Haunted by the mysterious loss of her grandmother many years ago, a beautiful young mother (Yumiko, played by Makiko Esumi) struggles to come to terms with the sudden loss of her husband. Yumiko remarries and with her young son moves to her new husband’s home in a remote village on the wild, untamed Sea of Japan. There, she is haunted by the past, but with time and the natural wonders around her, she awakens to find love, understanding, and a sense of peace.
Perhaps the finest Japanese director working today, Kore-eda has gone on to create such masterpieces as After Life, Nobody Knows and Still Walking. His feature films reflect back on his beginnings in documentary with a regard to truth and an incredibly humane sense of his characters' strength and fallibilities.
Working with almost entirely natural lighting, Kore-eda's remarkable and elegant camerawork makes Maborosi one of the most striking visual works in cinema.
"Each character moves and speaks differently, shining with the complex inner life of a real person with real needs, real memories, real thoughts." —Village Voice
Directed by Nagisa Oshima • Documentary • With William B. White, Nagisa Oshima • 1996 • 52 minutes
The forces and themes that have shaped his nation's cinema drive Nagisa Oshima's forceful and erudite essay. Based entirely on archive footage, it considers the rediscovery of Daisuke Ito's Chuji's...
Directed by Tiffany Hsiung • Documentary • 2016 • 104 minutes
THE APOLOGY follows the personal journeys of three former 'comfort women' who were among the 200,000 girls and young women kidnapped and forced into military sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.
Some 70 ...
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa • Drama • With Joe Odagiri, Tatsuya Fuji, Tadanobu Asano • 2003 • 115 minutes
"Casts its spell by drawing out the horror of everyday existence bit by bit, and then tossing in some otherworldly weirdness that makes the hair on the back of your neck try to run for cove...
